Great article here for any fan. This really lays out the intended purpose of spring practices. It has a lot less to do with developing depth charts than it does in offering a lot of players an opportunity to develop and demonstrate their ability to perform and perhaps earn a greater opportunity for playing time in the fall. Though tentative depth charts may be developed in the spring, actual and more accurate depth charts are developed when the team gets back together for August camp. This is a very informative read for those who weren't already aware of how this is done.

“I could go over the depth chart, but I saw where you all had already printed one,’ Auburn defensive coordinator Kevin Steele said on March 29. “It’s wrong, but you printed it anyway.”

Spring practice is, for the most part, about individual player development. It’s not establishing depth charts, that’s what preseason camp is for. It’s not about establishing any offensive or defensive playbook beyond a base package. Again, that’ll come in August.

College football coaches will happily tell you spring football is the basics of the sport. The Montgomery Advertiser spoke with and heard from several coaches throughout this spring season that said the media evaluations throughout the spring and certainly coming out of a spring scrimmage/game are usually either misguided or a symptom of paralysis by over analysis.

At the beginning of this spring's football season, Gus Malzahn said the best-case scenario would be getting depth charts from his positional coaches. And then it seemed like the Tigers coach, who is entering his sixth spring, realized his program doesn’t play Washington in Atlanta for nearly six months. No sense in making up a depth chart when by the time preseason camp opens, that chart is about as good as the paper it’ll be printed on.

“Here's what I feel good about. I feel good about our defense. I mean, there's no doubt,” Malzahn said after the A-Day Game. “And I feel good about our first offensive line. You saw those guys get better and better and start working together. Running back-wise, we are going to have some depth. Overall, I feel good about where we're at.” And that eight-word line practically describes how Malzahn and most other Football Bowl Subdivision coaches feel about the spring season.

“The development of any depth chart starts in the spring but never truly comes together until the preseason summer because those unknown players who haven’t seen much time on the field are tested more in the spring,” Bellantoni said. “You can’t worry about those guys down the depth chart during the season because of the win-loss reality of our jobs in the fall. "As coaches we’re about to say ‘Can this help us?’ and after trying it, if the answer is no then at least we know that in a less-pressured environment of the practice field,” he said.

As this relates to Arkansas, I wouldn't put a lot of faith into anything that anyone projected coming out of our spring practice, especially with the transition to a new offense and defense. The coaching staff learned a great deal about the hand that they have been dealt and are using that information to formulate a plan for 2018. But they know that changes can and will still occur between now and the time that we kick off the first game. Watch for the depth chart two weeks out from the first game. That will be far more accurate than anything we saw or read coming out of the spring.